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Had a pretty successful night. Fixed the drawing for the right side of the head, had to widen things out by almost an inch, but the proportions are correct now. Better to fix something immediately, no matter that it’s a lot of effort. Then I focused on first painting the shadows. Since his right cheek and eye were mostly framed by shadows, and I needed to mix some halftones to blend the shadow edge into, I also first painted the cheek and eye there. All in all, quite a bit of paint was put down last night!

Part of my ability to get right into painting was my awesome pochade box. Most of my mixes from last week were still workable, so I was able to start painting almost immediately. Here’s the state of the palette after last night’s session:

Starting the first painting with the hand, chin and mouth. Basically just putting in the planar changes and adding a vibrant color to build on later. I once again put my faith in my instructor, because to me it looked garishly bright. After watching her paint for a while, though, and picking her brain for a bit, I was able to get it to start coming together. It’s a bit different than the previous portraits and I love how she continues to push me with each project.

Second stage of the drawing for this semester’s portrait class. Fixing proportions, adding some detail, blocking in the shadow shapes. Ready for transfer to canvas before next week’s class. Graphite on paper, 14×17.

First night of Oil Portraiture. New model is an older gentleman, so this is going to be a really awesome class! It’s been a good progression of models: the first guy was clean-cut and angular, the second had interesting hair, this one has some wrinkles…and he put his hand in the pose, yikes! Painting a hand!

Just roughing in the drawing here, getting the angles and measurements together and just beginning to add some detail. You can see my value thumbnail for checking composition, I changed things around several times in the thumbnail before starting the larger drawing.

Wrapping up the second in a trilogy of oil portraiture classes tonight. Painting is still wet and oiled up, so I’ll try to get a good pic up once it’s dry and framed. But for now, here’s my second attempt at oil painting!